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Evading established accounts of the development of doctrine in the
Patristic era, Augustine's Christology has yet to receive the
critical scholarly attention it deserves. This study focuses on
Augustine's understanding of the humanity of Christ, as it emerged
in dialogue with his anti-Pelagian conception of human freedom and
Original Sin. By reinterpreting the Pelagian controversy as a
Western continuation of the Origenist controversy before it,
Dominic Keech argues that Augustine's reading of Origen lay at the
heart of his Christological response to Pelagianism. Augustine is
therefore situated within the network of fourth and fifth century
Western theologians concerned to defend Origen against accusations
of Platonic error and dangerous heresy. Opening with a survey of
scholarship on Augustine's Christology and anti-Pelagian theology,
Keech proceeds by redrawing the narrative of Augustine's engagement
with the issues and personalities involved in the Origenist and
Pelagian controversies. He highlights the predominant motif of
Augustine's anti-Pelagian Christology: the humanity of Christ, 'in
the likeness of sinful flesh' (Rom. 8.3), and argues that this is
elaborated through a series of receptions from the work of Ambrose
and Origen. The theological problems raised by this Christology -
in a Christ who is exempt from sin in a way which unbalances his
human nature - are explored by examining Augustine's understanding
of Apollinarianism, and his equivocal statements on the origin of
the human soul. This forms the backdrop for the book's speculative
conclusion, that the inconsistencies in Augustine's Christology can
be explained by placing it in an Origenian framework, in which the
soul of Christ remains sinless in the Incarnation because of its
relationship to the eternal Word, after the fall of souls to
embodiment.
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